Babylon's Fall contains gear and emote assets "borrowed" from Final Fantasy 14, developer PlatinumGames has confirmed.

Players of the Babylon's Fall phase three closed beta test had expressed concern about the visual appearance of gear in the long-awaited Square Enix-published online co-op 3D action game, with some accusing Platinum of "ripping off" the much-loved MMO.

Babylon's Fall producer Yosuke Saito penned a blog post addressing the concern, confirming the game uses gear assets from Final Fantasy 14.

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Square Enix has delayed Final Fantasy 14's Endwalker expansion by two weeks.

In a note to players, producer and director Naoki Yoshida apologised for the delay, which sees the hotly-anticipated expansion pushed back from its original 23rd November release date to 7th December.

"I am truly sorry," Yoshida said.

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Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida is "positive" on the possibility of the MMO coming to Xbox.

Speaking in an interview with Easy Allies (and reported by TheGamer), Yoshida was asked about whether the game will come to Microsoft's console. Though he wasn't able to share any details, it seems conversations are ongoing.

"I feel bad for saying the same thing every time, but we are still in discussions with Microsoft, and I feel like our conversations are going in a positive-like tone," he said.

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Final Fantasy 14 is now the most profitable game in Square Enix's RPG series.

Naoki Yoshida, Final Fantasy 14 director, revealed at a recent Endwalker expansion preview event that the MMO has now surpassed 24 million players, as reported by IGN.

This comes 11 years after the game was originally released and critically panned in its initial state. In a chart shared with the press, the game had 4 million registered users in 2015, then hit 10 million at the release of third expansion Stormblood in 2017. Since then, the numbers have doubled.

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Final Fantasy 14 developer Square Enix has revealed it will redesign the logo for new job sage following fan feedback that for some, it triggered their trypophobia - a phobia of holes.

Taking to the official website to explain the changes, Final Fantasy 14's producer and director Naoki Yoshida said that the team didn't think the job's icon was a "particularly big" deal, but soon "received feedback from players all over the world" that the icon "made them uncomfortable or fearful".

"This aversion is known as trypophobia, and those who have it feel disgust and fear when they see clusters of small holes or bumps," Yoshida explained (thanks, PC Gamer). "The severity of the reaction varies between people, and what triggers it in some may not do so in others.

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As an avid fan of Final Fantasy 14, I regularly log in on the evenings and weekends to play the game. But recently I noticed a trend while logging in; queues. It's not too unusual to have a short wait that almost immediately resolves, but this time, the line sat at over 300 players. It took ten minutes to simply get into the game - and all I wanted to do was mull around in the Bojzan Southern Front to grind away for an extremely shiny weapon. Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn is coming up to eight years old. So, why are more players than ever logging in to play the smash-hit MMORPG now?

Let's take a look at some of the stats. Final Fantasy 14 keeps breaking its Steam concurrent player records. At the time of writing, it just broke another concurrent record of over 67,019 players. But, that's just a peek behind the curtain for Final Fantasy 14's current player count. Many people still play the game on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and another native PC launcher, which is much harder to track with public information.

However, what is unusual is for the developers to issue a statement about the explosion of growth, and an apology from the game's director Naoki Yoshida on the recent phenomenon. He detailed immediate actions for Final Fantasy 14 to be able to handle this unprecedented surge in popularity over on the game's official blog. Action has been taken to cull queue times immediately, and a server upgrade originally intended for use at the release of the latest expansion, Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker, has already begun to roll out. But, why is this all happening?

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Final Fantasy 14's producer and director Naoki Yoshida has told players they "don't need to show so much restraint [they] stop having fun" following his request they make a few concessions to accomodate newcomers while Square continues to addresses server issues caused by a sudden surge in the MMO's popularity.

A record number of players have flocked to the now-decade-old MMO in recent times (Steam saw an all-time peak of 67,019 concurrent players earlier this week), and while that's undoubtedly a boon for the long-term health of the game, the sheer number of people wanting to get involved has caused serious server congestion, resulting in lengthy queue times and players being unable to create new characters.

On Tuesday, Yoshida apologised to Final Fantasy 14 players for the ongoing technical woes, assuring them Square is doing everything it can to improve matters. A recently released patch has implemented an automatic logout for AFK players as an "emergency measure to combat congestion", for instance, and login caps have been raised on North American servers.

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Final Fantasy 14's producer and director Naoki Yoshida has addressed the recent server congestion issues blighting the long-running MMO following a "staggering and unexpected" increase in the game's popularity.

"Final Fantasy 14 is currently experiencing a dramatic increase in its player base," Yoshida explained in a post to the game's website. "Recently, we have experienced record user numbers in all regions, with a vast amount of new players beginning their adventures." Indeed, the game successfully smashed its record for concurrent players on Steam earlier this month, reaching 47,542 concurrent players versus the previous record of 41,200 set in June 2019.

Although undoubtedly a boon for the potential longevity of the now-decade-old MMO, this "extreme influx" of new players, as Yoshida puts it, has placed a strain on Final Fantasy 14's servers, with congestion issues causing lengthy queue times and preventing players from creating new characters.

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Final Fantasy 14 is a game with a rich and storied history, spreading back across the generations to the PlayStation 3 era - and before that, to a 2010 PC release. Its status as an MMO separates it from Square-Enix's usual Final Fantasy offerings, but this game is very much worthy of its mainline series entry status. Today, we can play Final Fantasy 14 natively on PlayStation 5, but getting to the point of having a quality play experience on consoles seemed impossible when it first released, to the point where the game was even temporarily taken out of service. All of which brings us on to Digital Foundry video we're presenting today. Yes, you get to learn about Final Fantasy 14 on PS5 - and how it stacks up against PS4 and PS4 Pro offerings - but we go further, revisiting its misguided beginnings, its rebirth and its various expansions over the years.

We're very excited about this Final Fantasy 14 coverage. Marc 'Try4ce' Duddleson works on the excellent My Life in Gaming YouTube channel and occasionally guests on Digital Foundry - and despite not being a huge MMO fan, he absolutely loves Final Fantasy 14, having the authentic voice needed to assess the game as it is today and how it has evolved over the years. And in approaching this project, it's also been fascinating for the DF team to see how an experienced video producer gets to grip with our performance analysis tools and adapts the presentation to suit his vision for the project in hand.

And while the DF core team had little involvement in the production, you get the same level of detail as any of our projects - if not more so thanks to his deep knowledge of the game - which brings us on to the assessment of the PS5 built. Expectations should be kept in check - while FF14 is ever-evolving, it's still fundamentally a video game from 2013 and the engine has never been overhauled since. Even on PlayStation 5, the game retains the very dated FXAA anti-aliasing technique, shadow resolution could stand to be higher, and screen-space effects often fade well within the margins of your TV. Vegetation density and fade-in distance are the same in the PS4 and PS5 versions - and in fact, from what we can see, there are no visual enhancements on PS5 up against running the PS4 Pro version of the game, at least when it comes to comparing the two at the higher detail level.

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Early access to Final Fantasy XIV's latest expansion, Shadowbringers, went live earlier this week, but a significant DDoS attack on North American servers caused "extended waiting times" for players trying to get an early peek at the new content.

The attack caused a number of access issues, including disconnections from the North America data center Worlds, difficulty logging in, and difficulty accessing, sending, and receiving data from NA data centers.

"During the time below, we experienced network technical difficulties caused by DDoS attacks," an update on the official Final Fantasy XIV website said (thanks, PC Gamer). "Players may have experienced the listed issues as a result, but we are happy to inform that the game can now be played as normal."

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